We always say that "freedom is messy" and that "Freedom is not for sissies." From Sultan's A Perfect Prison:
Bloomberg is a living model of the glass half-full theory of human behavior. This is after all a man who banned large sodas, and if you can't trust people to have large sodas, then you can't trust them to have cold medicines, let alone guns. Where does it end? It ends the same place - it ends in a prison. Nowhere. If you believe that people are basically bad, then every problem you identify is met with another control measure until you control absolutely everything.
(Hizzoner, of course, has been surrounded by armed men since he got rich on Wall St, long before becoming Mayor. Must be nice to afford armed bodyguards and armed drivers of your Lincoln Town Car while you sip single malt Scotch in the back with your latest squeeze while denouncing legal gun owners.)
The eternal problem with widespread freedom from state control is that some small minority of people can't or won't handle freedom, personal independence, self-control. For whatever reason, they do not buy into our social contract or are unable to fulfill it. Perhaps they never even heard of it, never were informed that a person makes a deal to be a citizen here and that it is a historically-unique privilege, responsibility, and challenge. How come nobody told them that life in America is supposed to be difficult and risky, but filled with opportunity? It's not about safety and comfort and was never meant to be based on anything but virtue and freedom. Our streets are not paved with gold, but with blood, sweat, and tears.
These failures of a minority of bad apples to get with the program invite the state to step in in an effort to provide controls and supports externally. Thus we all lose a bit of freedom each time some jerk, idiot, sociopath, addict, or lunatic abrogates his American dignity and fails at running his own life in the manner of an honest, free, law-abiding and upstanding citizen. It's a shame - and wrong - that the least moral and worse-behaving of our population should have the power to deprive freedoms from the vast majority of decent citizens who aim to construct honorable, dignified, and independent lives by following their consciences or God's will as best they can.
Go ahead and ask me why I might want a 30-clip magazine, or a Big Gulp Coke. Well, I don't really want those things, but I don't want them forbidden me. I have a handgun carry permit, but I don't walk around armed all the time. Rarely, in fact. I might as well ask why you need a car that goes 110 mph, when car deaths in the US are far higher than gun deaths (32,000, vs 600 deaths by rifle - half of them suicides and others accidents).
(For other stats: Swimming pool drownings in the US: Approx. 3000 per year, mostly young kids. Backyard pools frighten me far more than guns do. I hate pools and I like guns... Also, firearm murders with illegal handguns thus far in the gun-banning village of Chicago, 2012: 470.)
Leftist control freaks often try to find signs of "market failure" to justify government intrusion into the free and voluntary exchange of goods and services. Similarly, they seek signs of "freedom failure" with the same goals. It's about power of the elites over us little people - always for our own good, of course, because we are "the masses." However, there are no "masses" in America and there is no aristocracy of any sort, political or otherwise.
Isn't obesity a "freedom failure"? Of course it is. North Korea has no such problem because they enforce "food control." So my final thought on this topic tonight: Why does the government allow Medicare-aged people to be overweight? 500,000 deaths from cardiovascular disease per year. Surely some controls are called for to address this crisis of excess freedom which results in so much disability and death, and burdens everyone else with their medical bills. Easy for the government to fix that: just offer to pay for medical care based on your BMI. If it's over 27, no free doctors. They are heading that way in the UK already. My view is that if you want to be heavy, do so and enjoy it. Not on my nickel, though. My freedom to life and property should trump all else because it is a gift from God.
Image is via Theo
often try to find signs of "market failure" to justify government intrusion into theļ£°free and voluntary exchange of goods and services. Similarly, they seek signs of "freedom failure" with the same goals. It's about power of the elites over us...
Tracked: Dec 27, 10:25